Everton fear lengthy injury lay-off for Lukaku

Everton manager Roberto Martinez fears Romelu Lukaku could face a lengthy absence after the striker injured his ankle in the loss to Liverpool.

Lukaku collided with team-mate Gareth Barry from Luis Suarez's corner, which saw Steven Gerrard open the scoring in a 4-0 win for Liverpool at Anfield.

And Lukaku, who has scored nine goals so far for Everton this season on loan from Chelsea, could be out of the side for a while, with Martinez admitting they are concerned and are just waiting to discover the extent of the problem.

"We are going to assess it, he has his ankle in a cast but it does not look too good. He picked up a bad injury," Martinez said. "He just collided with Gareth Barry in the corner as the ball was delivered into the near post. There was a collision and he got an ankle twisted.

"There are moments in games that can be very painful and that was one of them. Not only did we concede from a dead-ball situation, two of our players collided and Romelu got injured."